An enterprise can operate a software system that is accessed by a plurality of entities (e.g., customers). For example, the enterprise can provide software services that are accessed by the multiple entities in a multi-tenant configuration. An example software system can be provided to manage system landscapes of respective entities. In some examples, a system landscape includes a collection of respective systems operated by and/or on behalf of a particular entity. In extending such a software system to manage multiple system landscapes, various restrictions need to be implemented. Example restrictions can include ensuring host names are unique across all system landscapes, and maintaining system identifiers for clear separation between entities and/or system landscape.
For example, consider system landscapes of respective entities, each system landscape system containing one or more system identifiers (e.g., SID=ERP), each identifier is unique to a system of the respective system landscape. In some examples, each system identifier is unique within an entity's system landscape, but might not be unique across all system landscapes (e.g., a first system landscape of a first entity can include SID=ERP for a system in the first system landscape, and a second system landscape of a second entity can include SID=ERP for a system in the second system landscape). Consequently, an enterprise managing multiple system landscapes on behalf of multiple entities may encounter collisions between system identifiers. In some instances, identifier extensions can be used to distinguish between multiple systems (e.g., ERPABC, ERPDEF, where ABC and DEF are extensions for respective entities). However, it is up to the administrator of the enterprise to ensure a clear and consistent naming convention is implemented, and is followed by all entities. Another issue that arises is a lack of data separation between different system landscapes (e.g., separating data of the first entity and data of the second entity within systems of the enterprise managing system landscapes of the respective entities). Access restrictions based on which entity respective data belongs to can be overly complicated to be applied.
One approach can include providing multiple instances of the software services (e.g., multiple system landscape managers), one for each entity. This, however, multiplies the number of instances of the software services the service provider must provide and maintain. This multiplies the amount of technical resources required to provide all of the multiple instances, redundancy of shared data (e.g., multiple copies of data, even though the data is common to all instances), and the like. In effect, such an approach significantly impacts the total cost of ownership (TCO) in not only monetary, but also technical terms.